| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Conservative Party | £5,673,646 | £2,967,000 | £3,590,500 | £3,201,965 | £2,545,500 | £1,392,297 |
| Labour Party | £ 218,500 | £3,488,000 | £ 521,909 | £1,017,417 | £ 165,471 | £ 0 |
| Liberal Democrats | £ 275,000 | £ 251,000 | £ 509,998 | £ 80,000 | £ 130,000 | £ 0 |
| Green Party | £ 30,000 | £ 37,750 | £ 100,000 | £ 50,000 | £ 24,727 | £ 0 |
| Advance Together | £ 0 | £ 0 | £ 0 | £ 22,750 | £ 39,750 | £ 0 |
| Reform UK | £ 250,000 | £2,250,000 | £ 0 | £ 125,000 | £1,475,000 | £ 50,000 |
| Plaid Cymru | £ 0 | £ 70,000 | £ 0 | £ 0 | £ 0 | £ 0 |
| Alliance | £ 60,000 | £ 0 | £ 15,000 | £ 0 | £ 0 | £ 0 |
| SNP | £ 0 | £ 10,000 | £ 0 | £ 0 | £ 0 | £ 14,929 |
| Renew | £ 0 | £ 0 | £ 0 | £ 15,000 | £ 0 | £ 0 |
| Women's Equality Party | £ 0 | £ 0 | £ 0 | £ 0 | £ 20,000 | £ 0 |
| Total | £6,507,146 | £9,073,750 | £4,737,407 | £4,512,132 | £4,400,448 | £1,457,226 |
Pre poll donations 2019 GE
How much did each party recieve in donations over the 2019 pre-poll period?
The table below only include donations to central parties that were classified under ‘Pre-poll party’ for the 6 weeks leading up to the elections, also removing any public funds. In the Electoral Commission donation search, these donations can be searched for under the following labels:
- Pre-Poll 1 - Party(06/11/19 - 12/11/19) UKPGE 2019
- Pre-Poll 2 - Party(13/11/19 - 19/11/19) UKPGE 2019
- Pre-Poll 3 - Party(20/11/19 - 26/11/19) UKPGE 2019
- Pre-Poll 4 - Party(27/11/19 - 03/12/19) UKPGE 2019
- Pre-Poll 5 - Party(04/12/19 - 10/12/19) UKPGE 2019
- Pre-Poll 6 - Party(11/12/19 - 12/12/19) UKPGE 2019 (final 2 days)
This might not be representative of actual amounts, because there were donations made to parties not disclosed until Jan 2020 and put under the label of ‘Q4 2019’ or just at the time period they were eventually reported.
What was the average donation and donation frequency?
This table is intended to be used to comparison with the 2024 data to see if the changes to the law affected donations.
In 2019, the conservatives received huge sums, particularly from individual donors. As well as receiving way more in donations, they also received much larger sums of money from individuals and companies on average compared to Labour. Interestingly, the Lib Dems received more individual donations than Labour (and equally as many company ones as them), also with a higher average donation amount for both donor types.
As might be expected, the Labour Party total donation amount received was boosted by Trade Unions, with 28 donations and an average of huge sums, adding up to 5 mil.
Reform UK received a massive amount considering their total was made up of only 9 individual donations, with an average donation amount of 400,000.
| Donor Type | No. Donations | Average Size | Total | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Conservative Party | Individual | 196 | £ 68,743 | £13,473,657 |
| Company | 76 | £ 76,174 | £ 5,789,251 | |
| Trade Union | 0 | £ 0 | £ 0 | |
| Unincorporated Association | 2 | £ 44,000 | £ 88,000 | |
| Limited Liability Partnership | 1 | £ 20,000 | £ 20,000 | |
| Labour Party | Individual | 13 | £ 12,265 | £ 159,442 |
| Company | 6 | £ 33,600 | £ 201,600 | |
| Trade Union | 28 | £179,991 | £ 5,039,754 | |
| Unincorporated Association | 1 | £ 10,500 | £ 10,500 | |
| Limited Liability Partnership | 0 | £ 0 | £ 0 | |
| Liberal Democrats | Individual | 32 | £ 31,406 | £ 1,004,998 |
| Company | 6 | £ 40,167 | £ 241,000 | |
| Trade Union | 0 | £ 0 | £ 0 | |
| Unincorporated Association | 0 | £ 0 | £ 0 | |
| Limited Liability Partnership | 0 | £ 0 | £ 0 | |
| Green Party | Individual | 8 | £ 29,060 | £ 232,477 |
| Company | 1 | £ 10,000 | £ 10,000 | |
| Trade Union | 0 | £ 0 | £ 0 | |
| Unincorporated Association | 0 | £ 0 | £ 0 | |
| Limited Liability Partnership | 0 | £ 0 | £ 0 | |
| Advance Together | Individual | 3 | £ 10,833 | £ 32,500 |
| Company | 2 | £ 15,000 | £ 30,000 | |
| Trade Union | 0 | £ 0 | £ 0 | |
| Unincorporated Association | 0 | £ 0 | £ 0 | |
| Limited Liability Partnership | 0 | £ 0 | £ 0 | |
| Reform UK | Individual | 9 | £461,111 | £ 4,150,000 |
| Company | 0 | £ 0 | £ 0 | |
| Trade Union | 0 | £ 0 | £ 0 | |
| Unincorporated Association | 0 | £ 0 | £ 0 | |
| Limited Liability Partnership | 0 | £ 0 | £ 0 | |
| Plaid Cymru | Individual | 2 | £ 35,000 | £ 70,000 |
| Company | 0 | £ 0 | £ 0 | |
| Trade Union | 0 | £ 0 | £ 0 | |
| Unincorporated Association | 0 | £ 0 | £ 0 | |
| Limited Liability Partnership | 0 | £ 0 | £ 0 | |
| Alliance | Individual | 2 | £ 12,500 | £ 25,000 |
| Company | 1 | £ 50,000 | £ 50,000 | |
| Trade Union | 0 | £ 0 | £ 0 | |
| Unincorporated Association | 0 | £ 0 | £ 0 | |
| Limited Liability Partnership | 0 | £ 0 | £ 0 | |
| SNP | Individual | 1 | £ 14,929 | £ 14,929 |
| Company | 1 | £ 10,000 | £ 10,000 | |
| Trade Union | 0 | £ 0 | £ 0 | |
| Unincorporated Association | 0 | £ 0 | £ 0 | |
| Limited Liability Partnership | 0 | £ 0 | £ 0 | |
| Renew | Individual | 0 | £ 0 | £ 0 |
| Company | 1 | £ 15,000 | £ 15,000 | |
| Trade Union | 0 | £ 0 | £ 0 | |
| Unincorporated Association | 0 | £ 0 | £ 0 | |
| Limited Liability Partnership | 0 | £ 0 | £ 0 | |
| Women's Equality Party | Individual | 1 | £ 20,000 | £ 20,000 |
| Company | 0 | £ 0 | £ 0 | |
| Trade Union | 0 | £ 0 | £ 0 | |
| Unincorporated Association | 0 | £ 0 | £ 0 | |
| Limited Liability Partnership | 0 | £ 0 | £ 0 |
How much was donated on a week by week basis by different donor types?
Donations not classified as ‘pre-poll’
Many donations were made during the electoral time period that were not classified as pre-poll. This is because donations recieved under central party only are required to be disclosed. To get a full picture of what money was moving around during this time outside of those classified as pre-poll, I’ve explored the following questions:
- Did the main political parties receive any donations in this period that weren’t registered as pre-poll?
- If yes, were the nature of these donations disclosed?
- For donations made to the candidates running in individual constituencies, which one’s went to swing and safe seats for the Conservative and Labour party?
- Can MP’s recieve donations directly?
To collect this data I used the following search term:
- Source: https://search.electoralcommission.org.uk/
- Dates of search: 06/11/2019 - 12/12/2019 (by date received by donee)
- Search was made on the 21st June 2024
This generated 2,324 items in the search. The 2019_prepoll_all.csv file can be found in the data2019 folder in the associated github repo for this webpage.
How were donations during this period classified?
Public funds were first removed from the data, leaving 2,303 items.
Any money received by a registered political party during this period should (I assume) have been classified as pre-poll and reported during the time deadlines set by the EC. To check this, the political parties were filtered out from other types of donee’s (e.g., MPs or third party groups) to see what reporting period name the donations were placed under.
The 14 parties left with donations received during this time frame were:
- Advance Together (now de-registered)
- Alliance
- Conservative and Unionist Party
- Green Party
- Labour Party
- Liberal Democrats
- Plaid Cymru
- Reform UK
- Scottish Green Party
- Scottish Libertarian Party (now de-registered)
- Renew
- SNP
- The Official Monster Raving Loony Party
- UKIP
- Women’s Equality Party
Filtering out donations received by only these parties leaves 2,228 cases. Finally, the data was filtered for those classed under ‘central party’ in the accounting unit, as donations to specific constituencies (I assume) did not need to be disclosed by the pre-poll deadlines. This leaves 1,015 cases, suggesting some discrepancy as only 393 of these were classified correctly(?) under the pre-poll period.
Unsure: were these donations of a nature that meant they did not need to be disclosed to the EC as pre-poll?
Below is a table that summarises, for each party, what regulatory period were the donations made during this time classed as when they were reported to the EC. The graph also shows the time lag of how long it took for the donation to be reported to the EC after it was received by the party.
| Pre-Poll 1 | Pre-Poll 2 | Pre-Poll 3 | Pre-Poll 4 | Pre-Poll 5 | Pre-Poll 6 | Q4 2019 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Conservative Party | 69 | 61 | 41 | 37 | 52 | 15 | 360 |
| Labour Party | 12 | 5 | 10 | 16 | 5 | 0 | 161 |
| Liberal Democrats | 10 | 6 | 15 | 3 | 4 | 0 | 52 |
| Green Party | 2 | 4 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 8 |
| Advance Together | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 3 | 0 | 7 |
| Reform UK | 1 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 3 | 2 | 9 |
| Plaid Cymru | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 |
| Alliance | 2 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 |
| SNP | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 2 |
| Scottish Green Party | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 6 |
| Scottish Libertarian Party | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 |
| UKIP | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 |
| Renew | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 2 |
| Women's Equality Party | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 2 |
| The Official Monster Raving Loony Party | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 5 |
| Total | 96 | 81 | 68 | 61 | 69 | 18 | 622 |